wfn.org | Notes about People

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

19-August-1999 
99243 
 
    Notes about People 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter and Alexa Smith 
 
    Johan Christiaan Beker, New Testament scholar and for 30 years the 
Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Theology at Princeton 
Theological Seminary, died July 12 in Trenton, N.J., after a lengthy 
illness.  He was 75.  A world-renowned Pauline scholar, Beker was the 
author of "Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought," 
"Paul's Apocalyptic Gospel" and "Suffering and Hope." 
     Born in Gorsell, Holland, in the years before World War Two, he was 
forced to leave Holland and his family as a nineteen-year-old boy to work 
in a submarine factory in Nazi Germany to support the war effort.  During 
those years, Beker told others, he re-thought his decision to become a 
lawyer and instead chose to study the New Testament. 
    Survived by his wife, Terri Ann Kurosky Beker, and a son, Hendrik David 
Beker, a spokesperson for Princeton Seminary described Beker as "the most 
genuinely pastoral of all seminary teachers, a man of sensitive caring." 
His colleague, Daniel Migliore told press that Beker's courses "probed the 
depths of Paul and he taught them with a certain irreverence, but always as 
a true believer and a humble servant of the one about whom he taught." 
Before Beker joined the Princeton faculty in 1964 as a visiting professor, 
he taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York and the Pacific School 
of Religion.   

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